Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 71

generation. We see technology improve day-by-day, but the school system hasn't changed
in years and is out of date when compared to our progress in technology. Everything in our
world relies on it, and younger people are used to its constant use and dependability. As
schools transition to e-Schools, students will feel more comfortable and familiar with it
rather than distant. The vision of teens when it comes to what school is like is often
"uninteresting" or "not what I had expected," and yes there still are students who look
forward to school and studying, but they are fewer and fewer every year. A school that has
embraced technology and uses it to its advantage will have significantly more students that
are impatient to go back to personal devices and gadgets and significantly fewer students
that consider it just a mundane task.
Thinking about the role the teacher has in the e-Society educational system I came
across of what seemed to me the perfect definition “… what the teacher must be, to be an
effective competence model, is a day-to-day working model with whom to interact. It is not
so much that the teacher provides a model to imitate. Rather, it is that the teacher can
become a part of the student`s internal dialogue- somebody whose respect he wants,
someone whose standards he wishes to make his own. It is like becoming a speaker of a
language one shares with somebody. The language of that interaction becomes a part of
oneself, and the standards of style and clarity that one adopts for that interaction become
a part of one`s own standards.” (Bruner, 1966, p. 124) Finding common ground with your
students can sometimes be a difficult task even for an experienced teacher, but getting to
know your students and their interests can help a teacher find ways and get creative when
it comes to using devices to their advantage. “Education matters, profoundly. For our
children, but also for the people who teach our children. Meta-education – teaching the
people who teach – is just as important.” (DiGiano, Goldman, & Chorost, 2009, p. 1),
learning from each other is the most important thing.
3. Educational Strategies
A. Dialogue Journal Writing/ Speaking
The day school starts, every student faces the unknown: a new teacher, a new
situation, new colleagues or a new language. Even if the student has attended the same
school for some years, first day jitters are common. The emotional impact the new school
year has is being heightened by the possibility of attending a new school or studying a new
language, especially a language one cannot speak. “After the first days of school, once
they have developed some assurance that the teachers, the classroom, and classmates
are safe and that there are ways of coping, students are usually ready to talk to someone,
to express their fears or confusions, and to ask for explanations about what they don’t
understand. The teacher is the obvious person to talk to, but attempting to talk to the
teacher can be frustrating. After working up the courage to approach the teacher, and
despite careful mental rehearsals, students often feel uncertain of what to say, or find that
someone else is there listening in, or that the teacher responds with a question or a
comment which the student doesn’t understand. The result can be a renewed sense of
failure, which can eventually undermine the willingness to attempt to communicate at all.”
(Peyton & Reed, 2011, p. 1) The solution to this problem is the dialogue journal – it
provides a way for students to communicate without having to deal with the trouble of face-
to-face encounters.
“A dialogue journal is a conversation between a teacher and an individual student.
However, this conversation differs from all other they may have, in or out of the classroom;
it is written, it is completely private, and it takes place regularly and continually throughout
an entire school year.” (Peyton & Reed, 2011, p. 3) Taking this idea even further and trying
to combine different devices, the dialogue journal can have an audio format, a video
format or a written format in the shape of a notebook where the teacher is a partner in the
conversation. This particular educational strategy can create a bond between the student
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